FX-60 Dual-Core, Opteron, Dual Xeon?

Hey, well I'd ask on AMD, Intel or such forums, but it'd be so biased, I thought I'd ask here.

Which CPU do you guys think/know is best at what? Gaming? Encoding? CD/DVD Writing/Burning, etc...?

AMD Athlon FX-60 Dual-Core 2.6GHz 2x1MB Cache
Supposedly the #1 gaming CPU with mass benchmarks.

AMD Dual-Opteron [forgot max speed, but whatever it is]
Read many reviews, is normally a CPU for Servers but many people nowadays are buying these as there beasts for gaming and own at overclocking as the sillicon is stronger because it's built to be able to pump out all its power (being a server cpu) therefore taking a good Overclock beating.

Intel Pentium *Dual-Core* Xeon 3.4GHz
Supposedly a wild beast for Servers also, usually a server CPU, and again, like the Opterons, used nowadays quite a bit for gamers rigs too.


I've just been wondering what you think is best at what? Gaming, etc...

Current best buy seems to be the lowly Pentium-D if you plan on OC'ing:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/..._41_ghz_cores/

$130 for a 4.1ghz monster... hehe

as of right now, the fx-60 is the best gamming processor on the market hands down. though a dual core opteron 175 socket 939 is just as good in performance if you have a decent overclocking rig. i would be patient when it comes to buying anything in computer hardware right now being that intel's conro and amd's am2 line up are about to come out. my suggestion is; save up till the 3rd quarter this year when all the latest stuff is finaly out.

yeah, that intel proc is amazing too, wow.... If only I had a good intel platform to test that thing with. im realy happy with my old 3200 venice @ 2.6ghz though. i wish they would have put an overclocked opteron 175 @ 3.2 or a fx-60 @ 3.2 or higher on that test on tomshardware

I recently was lucky to get a new PC (Quad Opteron), so here are some thoughts on the matter.

It seems that with respect to the AMD processors you listed, only Opteron can actually be used in multi-processor systems due to socket compatibility.

Unless you have a real need for multi-processor power (and if you are in that situation, you will really know), you will be better off buying a single-processor machine and spending some money on good hard drives and graphics cards.

Investing in a big hard drive that achives 3Gb/s data throughput (again, assuming here you are working on somewhat of a budget in a home environment) and a graphics card that exhibits serious processing power will make your games fly. Regarding the processor, anything that includes dual core will do fine for some time to come, and I don't believe it has to be the fastest processor out there. If you can afford it, fine, but that would be where I would save first if I had to.

In so many words, looking over your list, I would be looking at the AMD Athlon for gaming and normal PC use.

Athlon X2 or Athlon 64 for gaming. A64 if you don't do much else than game (get a 3500+ at least, don't bother with the 4000.) If you multitask, you would lean towards the X2. The 3800+ is nice.
If you're on the cheap, the Pentium D 805, 820, 920, or 930 will suit you well, as would the P4 631 or 524.

You do not need a DP solution for general usage, unless you're into workstation stuff like heavy Photoshop or other rendering. Sure, a dual Opty 248 or Xeon 3.2 isn't terribly expensive, but you have dual-core at your fingertips.

By the way, don't upgrade now, wait for AM2 in a week.

I agree whole heartedly, AMD all the way, YES intel are slightly quicker at carrying out mathematical calculations, but for general useage, and gaming AMD take it.

*cracks knuckles*

FX-60 Dual Core - These are just the s939 dual core Opterons w/ an unlocked multiplier. This is essentially just paying a price premium for a name and for the unlocked multiplier, which just allows the end user to overclock more easily, which isn't a big deal at all.

Opteron - These in both single and dual core are monsters. You want the s939 flavor, as the others are shitty and nowhere near designed for gaming and etc.... This is the chip thats number 1 at the moment in my book. IMO the Opteron 144 / 146 (single core) or Opteron 165 / 170 (dual core) are the #1 best bang for your buck right now. They overclock to around 2.8ish and 2.6ish on air respectively though your mileage may vary.

Xeons - I'm not all too familular with these, though if i'm not mistaken are more server level chips than anything. Most likely using some form of ECC memory, and if so should be avoided at all cost. Either way if these aren't phenominal (sp?) then they shouldn't even be considered with the s939 Opterons around.

If your willing to wait, to shell out for the price premium, and to bother with first gen bugs, glitches, and possible extreme instability then wait out Conroe. It should blow everything else away, but I wouldn't bother getting it until they have seen exactly what it can do under every circumstance and all the bugs are worked out.

EDIT -- Same with AM2, plus all the benches show it being lack luster at best. If anything wait out AM2 so it drops the prices for s939 stuff more, lmao.

get yourself a opteron dualie and overclock it past a fx60.

For the people saying wait for AM2, you do realise this is not a new architecture like conroe is. Its simply a new socket to allow amd to use ddr2 memory (if memory serves) plus maybe a few other things. But essentially the processors will be no better than the current s939 ones.

So if your waiting, you should be waiting for conroe at the moment.

From what I can see only one person said wait for AM2 in order to buy it.... I merely outlined the possible problems of both AM2 and Conroe. Since you said that though, i'll bite:

I'm not sure if its a completely reinvented architecture for AM2, nor am I sure of this for Conroe. Although it must be somewhat different or something along those lines, as current AMD's prefer tighter timings and lower latencies much more than the higher bandwiths. DDR2 isn't anything special, atleast not on our end, and I can't really compare it to DDR since all platforms that use DDR don't use DDR2. Not to mention the fact that the core architectures are almost always different. You are correct on the "it won't be much better" comment though, spot on, as s940 AM2 vs s939 = 2% gains...wowza.

If anything once the tech matures we'll see gains, now its just a steaming pile of untested junk. IMO waiting out means one of two things for 99% of all users:

1. Wait for it to release, and buy last gen's tech. As its tested, stable, and cheaper now that a new version is out.

2. The ones willling to pay huge amounts for menial gains and high possiblities of malfunction w/o notice.

Read quite a few reviews, just a note, AM2 is not a new system/cpu, it's just a new motherboard type for AMD to allow DDR2 memory [RAM] modules, and from what I've read on quite a few benchmarks, it's a minor 5 to 10% performance increase, barely 10 most the times in benchmarks.

Now that AM2's out, it's certainly not unwise to go that route, since performance is the same since 939 (think Northwood to Prescott).

I'm waiting for Conroe, myself, early '07 will be my upgrade.

That seems to be the case, a move to (a different version) s940, the reason that gains are so small right now is the huge bandwiths are very much eclipsed by the horrid latencies. Right now AMD's only real gain from DDR2 is its lowered voltage / heat, and its cheaper (or was). Perhaps later this won't be the case, but it kinda seems to me, as in the case of Intel, DDR2 is more a band aid than anything.

Meh, if prices are very similar AM2 may be a good idea, that is if your not joining up on the Conroe bandwagon later. The only reason to go AM2 right now is it'll live longer than s939 at the moment. IMO adopting first gen hardware, especially new architectures isn't a great idea, which is why I for one am not planning on first gen Conroe. I'll let the other people work out the bugs w/ tech support. Hell, look @ SLI technology. For close to six months those two super expensive GPU's you shelled out for basically didn't work together =\

True, C0 prescotts were furnaces, but Cedar Mill is awesome (as awesome as anything Prescott-derived can be).
AM2 isn't a new uarch though, so it's pretty safe. It doesn't seem to have the same limitations as the early A64s did (4 dimms and ) and you've got faster CPUs. 939 is pretty dead now, 754 may even live longer. Maybe rev. 2 of the mobos is a safer time to jump in.

As for Conroe? Waiting for a cheap E6800.

Agree

Disagree

How so? The problem with ddr2 ram, is still with the higher timings correlates with the higher frequencies. Until better chips come out, the difference won't be that big. Now to s939 dead..... I say hardly, I mean AM2 was also designed so that all the different processors from AMD could be put into one board. Along with that, AMD + intel are working towards Reverse Threading their processors, and those will most likely come out on s939. AM2 has potential, but s939 still has a couple of years to it.

Edit- Here's a Conroe Mobo. http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/tm.asp?m=130067. Not sure what I would do with 10x USB ports :P

Do you have any information backing up the claims that s940 (AM2) was designed to work with other AMD chips? As i've not seen any information on that. There are two s940's, neither of which are interchangable.

ok, let me restate what I mean by wait for AM2.

I mean, wait for AMD to release their 65nm line of AM2 not the current 90nm AM2.

And of course the new architecture of the conro will woop the current AM2s since they are still using the old 90nm proccess. Im waiting for 65nm to come out so we can see a fair fight between the two. Im hopping both sides do extreemly well against eachother so it makes them strive to make even more powerfull CPUs.

As Seef said don't worry about the AM2 atm...Wait til that thing hits the 65nm, then think about it . We'll Break down your processor Choices you mentioned.
*Off Topic* Am2 is a s940 core, but the memory architecture is changed, hence why the socket needed to be changed. Given the memory change I find it VERY doubtful that a current s940 opteron will work in a AM2 s940. The memory Controller is being changed to allow to take advantage of DDR2.

Xeon - This guy is optimized for the 64bit world. It doesn't run as efficient when placed in a 32bit world imho. But if you are running a server and or ultra high end at home WORKSTATION ( 3ds Max, heavy rendering etc.) where you would need the extra memory go this route.

Opteron - Also Optimized for the 64bit world, but is capable of 8Gb of memory per processor. And Also there are 3 (I believe) HT links per processor, which allows the information being processed to flow freely. Downside is, finding a workstation motherboard capable of the above stated, without having to resort to a server setup. Most Opterons are not going to keep up in any bench vs thier Athlon 64 counterpart.

Pentium D Series - What a find these are, and with the price as low as $125 @ www.newegg.com for the Pentium D 805 version, this price is pretty good. Especially for a dual core processor, which the X2 doesn't even come close in the same price arena. Yes they are only 2.66 ghz, but as Tomshardware found out, with a little water cooling, and a little more voltage, can be clocked at 4.1ghz. Which isn't recommended, as it severly shortens the life span of that processor at 4.1ghz. As with any dual core, this is great for multi tasking.

Athlon X2 - Another Dual core setup from AMD, running on the 90nm process. Like the other dual cores great for multi-tasking. Let me define multi-tasking on a home pc/desktop - Playing Ut2004, Compressing a win-rar file, and a mp3 encoding device...Not many of us are going to do that. Besides your Athlon 64 San Diego Core 4000+ blows away the X2 Manchester core 4400+ BY FAR.

Athlon 64 / FX - Well the FX's are the bruisers, and are the kings of the benchmark so-to-speak. It comes at a very high price though. Expect to pay around $1,000 US dollars for it. Now again the FX-60 is a dual core design, made for the multi-tasker. The Althon 64 4000+ San Diego single Core, is a highly overlooked processor. You can expect to pay around $340 range, for something that isn't too far behind the FX-60. If you look at http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.ht...=69&model2=240 you'll see less that 1% of a performance difference from the FX-60 over the +4000, in GAMING benchmarks. The extra 700 dollars is really not worth it in my opinion. With the extra 700 dollars you can get your self a high end video card. If you are worried about going s939, because of the upcoming s940, don't be. Going to be while before you have to worry about that. YOu'll be set for the windows Vista era, that will eventually be upon us, and you'll have nothing to worry about.

*Edit Grammar lol*

You will see zero benefit from a dual core CPU in almost all games right now. In fact, the only game I know of that uses my second core somewhat is Oblivion. There are some patches for some FPS games, like the awful Quake 4, but lol those don't mean much to me. I've read it's extremely difficult to make games take good advantage of SMP so while surely there will be future games that are capable of it, they won't be night and day better. And, in all games that support SMP right now, the GPU is what determines your speed far above anything the CPU can do.

A higher clocked single core CPU will be faster, and probably cheaper lol.

^-- Your Opteron section is alittle off. You fail to take into consideration the s939 Opterons, which not only overclock higher, use less voltage @ stock, and have higher L2 cache than most of the A64's that you would consider buying. IMO there are only two dual cores worth mentioning, the AMD Opteron 165 and the AMD X2 3800+. If possible get the 165.

Not completely true . XP takes advantage of dual cores, so even if a game app is only single threaded, essential background processes are still being evenly distributed between both cores to maximize performance. I'm running a dual core laptop now, and when I check CPU utilization with only GW active, I usually see both cores working at ~55% load. If McAfee unexpectedly kicks in during a high load game scene, my system keeps right on going with no visible performance hit. I can open 10+ IE browsers, Windows Explorers, and other apps at the same time with no hit to GW. Such activity brings my single core P4-2.5ghz to a screeching halt. In today's multi-tasking OS environment, there's really no reason to go single core anymore.

Pentium4-D is only $130... How can you not be temped by this 4.1ghz bargain?

The FX series just too damn expensive, and offer not much improvement!

$700+ for just 512 L2 cache...way not worth it

FX series CPU's (current ones) have a minimum of 1MB L2 cache per core. Thats not the major feature though, people buy them for the high stock clocks, the name, and the unlocked multiplier. Which is only useful if your overclocking, and / or are too lazy to just overclock the usual way.

Well again Its still around 330 dollars. In this Case I would still opt for the San Diego 4000+ based purely on performance in a gaming world, my post was in reference to how these stack in a gaming benchmark. This cache isn't going to result too much in the gaming world. When you start using the multitask capabilities of the X2/ highend opteron, then it gets interesting

Just to clear up some misinformation:
Opterons are server-grade Athlon 64s. Exact same silicon, just that the Opties are tested more rigorously.
Xeons are server-grade Pentium 4 (Prescott). Again, it's the same silicon, just validated in a different process. There are some differences, like early Prescotts (5x0, 5x5 series) not having EM64T while the early Nocona Xeons did, or a 2 GHz 1Mx2 dual-core AMD64 processor (the 165, I believe? I'm more of an intel guy) but the chips are otherwise identical. A P4 551 G1-step will perform the same as a Xeon 3.4 G1 stepping, 64-bit or 32-bit. Within a family, of course, the 64 v. 32-bit performance will be relatively the same.

All FX processors have had 1M L2, even the old S940 FX51 and FX53s.